A Paris Apartment

by Michelle Gable

  “Yes, every day. Multiple times a day. It’s what eventually killed her. First her face became paralyzed, and her mind soon followed. Lead poisoning for the sake of beauty. Factory girls got lead poisoning from their working conditions. One could argue that Marthe did, too.”

  “Wow.” April dropped the jar onto the table and wiped both hands on her jeans. “Poor Marthe.”

  “Poor everyone,” Madame Vannier said with a sigh. Luc continued to sit between them puffing on a cigarette and looking like the wrong side of a hangover. He was not, April guessed, a morning person.

  “Did Lisette ever reconnect with the Hugo family?” April asked. “Once the war was over?”

  “Well, Jeanne Hugo passed in 1941.”

  “What about the others? They were technically her family. It is an important heritage, I would think. At least it was important to Marthe.”

  “When Lisette left Paris she left Paris. It did not matter to her what happened in an orphanage sixty years earlier. And given her encounter with Jeanne, she did not have high hopes for a future with the extended Hugo family.”

  “I can’t blame her for that,” April said. “The nuns almost did Marthe a disservice by revealing her lineage, telling her what she could never have. It drove Marthe to the point of obsession.”

  “Lineage is a double-edged sword, non? Sometimes it tells you too much. Your so-called provenance is not always good. I’ve learned this firsthand many times over the years.”

  “With the Hugos?”

  “With my own background.”

  “I’m sorry.” April said, squinting, confused. “I’m not familiar with the name Vannier.”

  “There is no reason for you to be. It was my mother’s maiden name and should mean nothing to plucky little auction-house historians.” Madame Vannier smirked. “It was her married name you might recognize. You recall the painting you found? In the apartment? The one you believe is so valuable?”

  “Oh, god, don’t tell me it’s not a Boldini!” April said and thumped her head on the table. “I cannot take this.”

  “It’s a Boldini, all right,” Madame Vannier said and once again emitted one of her hyenalike chuckles. “Come now, Madame Vogt, don’t you want to face me when you ask these questions?”

  April lifted her head from the table.

  “Thank god,” April said, a little breathless. “You would’ve caused a whole mountain of problems for me if you’d said otherwise.”

  “Well, goodness!” Madame Vannier said and slapped her chest. “I certainly wouldn’t want to cause any problems for you. Not to worry, ma chérie. It is a Boldini. I say this with authority because I am a Boldini, too.”

  Chapitre LXXVII

  The Boldini revelation brought an added heaviness to Madame Vannier’s breathing, which in turn drew an entirely new batch of home health aides to the kitchen. This time they came with hard-core pieces of medical equipment, including a portable oxygen tank. Watching Madame Vannier take gulps of air from the mask made April want a hit, too. Her breathing was also labored after what she just heard.

  Madame Vannier was Boldini’s daughter, his legitimate daughter. At age eighty-seven, the ever-crotchety Boldini decided to settle down once and for all. He wanted a wife and a family despite the advanced date on the calendar. At his wedding luncheon Boldini apologized for his geriatric state and famously announced, “It is not my fault if I am so old, it’s something which has happened to me all at once.” The Master of Swish was able to sire one more child before he died of pneumonia less than eighteen months after the wedding.

  “Can we get you anything?” April asked after a Latin-looking man wheeled away the oxygen. “Some water? Should we step outside?”

  “No, I am fine,” Madame Vannier said and settled back into her chair. She had a new teacup in hand and offered her icy cool smile as if nothing happened. “So now you know my part in this story, how I fit into the picture.”

  “It is an amazing legacy,” April said. “You must feel very proud of your father.”

  “I never knew him.” Madame Vannier shrugged. “He died when I was so young, and as a girl I did not much care for his artistic pursuits. Like most children, I did not understand them. So perhaps ‘pride’ is not the correct word. I’ve come to appreciate him, however. I must confess I get a certain satisfaction when one of his paintings sells for a high price at auction. According to my mother, bless her soul, to be adored for his talent was all he ever wanted in life.”

  “Your mother,” April started, remembering what Marc and Olivier told her. “She wrote about the painting in the flat, correct?”

  “Yes.” Madame Vannier nodded. “It helped with your provenance, non?”

  “Regarding the Boldini it was our provenance,” April said.

  “She would’ve been pleased to help. Mother loved that man, despite his surly personality.”

  “He had a heart,” April said. “He probably would’ve been thrilled to know his daughters lived beneath the same roof and took care of each other for so many years. His blood, his brood, carrying on without him.”

  Madame Vannier smiled. It was not one of her condescending, smug grins but a tight, small, lipless one. It was a smile of sadness and regret.

  “He may have loved us both,” she said. “But only one of us was blood.”

  “You said he was your father.”

  “Indeed I did.”

  “Oh.” The words hit April like kick to the middle. “You think … do you think Lisette was not his daughter? I thought you were sisters? Half sisters? It’s why you were so close.”

  “We were sisters,” Madame Vannier said with a nod. “But not by blood.” She sighed deeply. One tear spilled from the corner of her eye. It stayed atop her cheek like a raindrop on a pink rose petal.

  “Why did Marthe say he was her father, then?” April asked.

  “I don’t know where the idea originated,” Madame Vannier said. “But she believed it entirely. Even Lisette was convinced after reading Grand-mère’s journals. It was why she came to our house when it was time to escape Paris. I was much younger, you see. Lisette thought it her duty to look after me, just as Marthe thought it was her duty to look after Marguérite. And Marguérite’s to look after Marthe. In the end I am glad she believed this. I am glad delusions of family brought her to me.”

  Madame Vannier turned her head and gazed out the window, her long, flat face reflecting against the long, flat pane. April fiddled with a worn spot on her jeans. As she had so many times since arriving, April waited for Madame Vannier to gather the strength to continue.

  “Lisette wanted to believe, I think,” Agnès said, still staring through the window. “Like Marthe, she wanted a family, a history. Don’t we all? Alas, a DNA test was conducted postmortem. I should’ve left it alone.” Madame Vannier sniffed. A few more tears dribbled onto her cheeks. “My mother always insisted it wasn’t true, that my father swore he never so much as touched the girl. Béatrice.”

  “Who was Lisette’s father?” April asked. “If not Boldini, then who?”

  “Béatrice was raised in the Folies. She played with her toys beneath the bar counter. Later, when she was older, she tried out makeup and hairstyles in the dressing rooms of the dancers. Lisette’s father could’ve been anyone. And I mean that quite literally. A beautiful girl, in a dance hall, with only half a mind? I ask you, how many scenarios could there be?”

  “A lot.” April’s chin dropped into her chest. “A lot.”

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Madame Vannier said suddenly. She crept up from the table. “I must take a break. This has all been rather exhausting.”

  Without a good-bye or any indication if she might return, Madame Vannier dumped her teacup in the sink and limped down the hallway.

  “That was quite a lot of information,” Luc said once the slow pad of the old woman’s feet dissipated. “Quite a lot.”

  April grunted in acknowledgment, her brain and guts knotted. Madame Vannier gave her
what she asked for, but it was not what April wanted at all.

  “I can’t believe Marthe ended up as she did,” April said. “She was surrounded by so many people but then she died insane, and in complete obscurity.”

  “We all die in obscurity,” Luc said. “We all go alone. Tell me, Avril, what was it you thought you’d find here?”

  “I don’t even know. Closure?”

  “Closure for you or for Marthe? Ça fait rien. Either way, there is no such thing. Life moves on, the world moves on, the seeds we plant continue to grow. But Marthe de Florian is quite fortunate, non? Despite the crazy. Not many of us have pretty scholars caring about our personal exploits a century in arrears. Marthe will have her big auction. Her portrait will sell to some rich old fop for a million euros or more. The way I see it, she ended up better than most.”

  Luc stubbed out his cigarette.

  “Please refrain from throwing out any seven-figure numbers,” April grumbled. “I don’t know what I’ll do if that painting doesn’t go for what it should.”

  “Provenance, ma belle. Provenance.”

  Someone shuffled into the kitchen then, an Asian woman in a kimono. She told them Madame Vannier had retired for the day. She trusted they could see their way out and back to Paris, extra emphasis on “back to Paris.”

  “That’s quite the unceremonious dismissal,” April murmured once the woman spun back out of the room. “Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.”

  “‘Don’t let the door hit your ass.’ I like it. Into my collection of American idioms it goes!”

  They stood. April stole one last glance at Madame Vannier’s kitchen (Lisette’s kitchen, Marguérite’s kitchen) before tiptoeing out into the hallway.

  “It’s probably best we go now anyway,” Luc said once they were in the foyer. He swung open the thick oak door and paused at the top step. The morning sunlight shot through his hair. It turned his brown eyes almost green. “We are nearly out of time. Are you ready to leave Sarlat?”

  “Never mind Sarlat.” April lifted her tote and flung it over her right shoulder. “My flight departs in twelve hours. I have to be ready to leave Paris.”

  “Not to worry. You’ll be back.”

  April smiled and shuffled down the steps. Her bag was lighter now without the perpetual existence of Marthe’s journals inside. It was odd to think of it as empty. It was odd to think her job was done and in twenty-four hours she would be back in the United States.

  April tried to imagine herself driving away from Madame Vannier’s home. She pictured arriving in Paris and Luc standing on the corner hailing her a taxi. April would sit in the backseat while the driver wound out of the city, Paris dropping farther and farther behind her.

  She could hear the sound of the jet’s engines and feel the cardboard-like airplane floor beneath her feet. Taste of stale air in her nose and mouth, April would take a seat by the window, always by the window. The engines would rev and they’d fly back out over Paris, a million lights twinkling below.

  Eventually the aircraft would touch down in New York. It seemed farfetched even if landing was goal number one. April tried to feel herself exiting the plane and swimming through the melee of travelers. She imagined the long and winding customs line. Then what?

  If he kept his promise, Troy would be waiting outside security. If he was there, he might grab April’s bag (this time she’d let him) and put an arm around her shoulders. Together they’d find a way to navigate their new old relationship.

  “Fifty-fifty chance,” they said on the beach in Coronado. It was not a sure thing but much better odds than April had given herself. Best of all, for two people who made their livings estimating value, in finance or in furniture, what might be a low number to most was understood by both to be something more. It was not a crapshoot but fifty hard-fought points, worthy of the effort and a very solid start.

  April remembered her hesitation when she first stepped into Marthe’s apartment and saw the dust-caked furniture clumped in groups and shrouded from the outside. Assessing so many pieces seemed dauntingly hopeless at the time, never mind the matter of how to make sense of the assets’ meaning and value. Still, April dug in and ultimately found what she needed. Provenance mattered. History mattered. But it could not guarantee what might happen next.

  Her marriage was no less overwhelmed, no less cluttered. This time, though, April knew what kind of courage would be required, the honesty it would take, to root around until her hands cracked and fingernails bled. After tackling Marthe’s chaos, her own did not appear quite so bad. There was value there. And unlike with Madame de Florian, there were only two people who needed to see it.

  Chapitre LXXVIII

  PROPERTY FROM THE MADAME DE FLORIAN COLLECTION

  Important Continental Furniture, Fine & Decorative Art

  MARTHE DE FLORIAN: An Appreciation

  Her apartment was shuttered for seventy years, since before World War II and indeed before this auctioneer and many of our bidders were born.

  Last spring, when I stepped inside the former 9e flat of Marthe de Florian, I was taken aback by the sheer magnitude and beauty of the pieces before me. Every major period from George II and Louis XVI onward was represented, not a category of Continental furniture or fine art overlooked. It was and remains the single largest and most valuable group of assets belonging to one family that I have seen.

  All these months later, I still find myself wondering if I really did see the apartment and its exquisite pieces, all of them entirely fresh to market. My first glance around the home revealed a pink and gilded fairy world, the spoils and their stories all the more bewitching as I delved deeper. Our team encountered an unending supply of treasures, all given life by the diaries left behind, photographic excerpts of which can be found in this catalogue.

  Her name might not be familiar to bidders, but the apartment’s former occupant and author of the journals, Madame de Florian, was a Parisian courtesan who died in 1935. In her tenure as one of the most famous demimondaines of the Belle Époque she entertained the likes of statesman Georges Clemenceau, Count Robert de Montesquiou, and portraitist Giovanni Boldini, who has a very important piece in this auction.

  Madame de Florian willed the home’s contents to her granddaughter, Elisabetta Quatremer. When the Nazis descended upon Paris in 1940, Madame Quatremer locked the apartment, fled the city, and never returned, though she continued paying rent on the flat for the next seventy years.

  Madame Quatremer died earlier this year in Sarlat, and it was the woman raised as her sister who contacted Sotheby’s to conduct the sale of the Madame de Florian Collection. We are incredibly honored to oversee this auction. I’ve gone to great lengths to capture the magic of the lots, and I hope Madame de Florian would be proud.

  Some of my most cherished pieces include a pair of painted ostrich eggs, a Napoleon III giltwood looking glass and console originally from a palace in Cairo, and a set of two George III mahogany serpentine commodes in condition so excellent they should really be considered new. That is, if they weren’t more than two hundred years old.

  Though I should not pick a favorite, I will, and therefore must admit it is the portrait of Madame de Florian painted by Giovanni Boldini. Any moderately well-versed collector understands the significance of a Boldini in its own right, but this work is important for reasons beyond the person who created it. Not only is it the first time this painting has been on the market, a heady-enough claim, but it is also the first time the art world has known of its existence.

  Let that sink in for a moment. A Giovanni Boldini: he, the greatest portraitist of the Belle Époque, and a piece unknown to the world, unknown to those who are paid to know everything when it comes to this.

  Beyond the Boldini, the quality of the collection defies description, each lot a piece that seduces, each asset untouched since before the Second World War. Prepare to be charmed and dazzled by the oak and giltwood and silver, but mostly by Marthe de Florian herself.
Though don’t let yourself fall too far under her spell, as competition abounds. You don’t want to be caught daydreaming when the final hammer is thrown.

  April Vogt

  Senior Vice President

  French & Continental Furniture

  EPILOGUE

  April held the book in her hands: three thousand lots, six pounds of finely glossed paper, one woman’s estate. The Madame de Florian Collection was finally ready for the auction floor.

  Because of the size, they’d broken the auction into sixteen sessions held over one week’s time. In the days leading up to opening night, dealers and collectors from around the world descended on Paris to participate in the private views, VIP dinners, and all the ancillary schmoozing required for an event of this size. Heavyweights mingled as the big-breasted client-service specialists tottered around in their red-soled heels.

  Opening night was the most important, featuring the biggest of the big-ticket items. The first few properties set the tone for the rest of the auctions. They had to create a buzz loud enough to bring more players to the table. So while there were three thousand lots, the success of the entire auction hinged on the first, the most important, the Boldini. The estimate in the catalog was one million euros. To consider it a success Marthe de Florian had to go for at least one-point-two.

  April fretted in one of the VIP skyboxes as she watched Olivier do his sound check. Various worker bees crept along the floor using rulers to properly space the distance between chairs. The people manning the phone banks checked dial tones and cords, sometimes crawling beneath desks in tuxedos and ball gowns to inspect faulty connections. Soon the doors would open and one thousand people would filter in.

  Unable to sit, April paced by the front windows, fussing with the curtains as she went. Behind her sat Peter. Beside Peter sat Troy, thumbing through the catalog, frowning at the high prices. Really? Fifty thousand euros for an old chair? It produces no revenue, no EBITDA! As if earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization meant anything. His models would’ve had Marthe’s entire apartment fully depreciated, and therefore worthless. She’d quell that deal mind of his yet.